Basque Group Is Suspected In Shooting

By EMMA DALY

Published: May 7, 2001

MADRID, May 6—
A regional leader from Spain's ruling party was shot dead today in an attack ascribed to the separatist group E.T.A., just one week before voters elect a Basque government.

The killing in the city of Zaragoza, 100 miles outside the autonomous Basque country, is the first attributed to the separatist group since the election campaign began in earnest last month. In the voting, according to early polls, nationalist parties risk losing power for the first time in 20 years, perhaps to an unusual coalition of the center-right Popular Party and the Socialist Party, united against the nationalists.

Manuel Giménez Abad, president of the Popular Party in Aragón and also a senator in Madrid, was shot three times, twice in the head, officials said. Mr. Giménez, a lawyer, 52, was on his way to a soccer match in the early evening with his son. The police said he was not being protected by a bodyguard.

Witnesses described the gunman as a long-haired man of about 25, and officials said the police had found 9-millimeter shell casings next to the body. The ammunition supported the theory that E.T.A. had carried out its 30th shooting since it ended a cease-fire it declared in December 1999, the police said.

There was immediate condemnation from most political parties, and all but Euskal Herritarrok, the party widely seen as E.T.A.'s political wing, announced a suspension of campaigning to protest the killing. Basque politicians also announced silent vigils against the separatists.

The last fatal attack ascribed to the organization was the shooting of a Basque councilor from the Socialist Party in March, before the campaign's official start. The recent absence of separatist violence, during a campaign in which the Basque Nationalist Party could lose power, had been noted with cautious relief by analysts and politicians. They described E.T.A.'s quiescence as an attempt to foster votes for Euskal Herritarrok, whose support is slipping in opinion polls.

For that party, ''it is better for E.T.A. not to act, but E.T.A. has not disappeared,'' Carlos Iturgaiz, president of the Popular Party in the Basque country, warned last week.

The Popular Party and opposition Socialists say they are prepared to form a grand coalition in the Basque country to defeat the nationalists. Although the Basque Nationalist Party is likely to win most votes, it will probably fall short of a majority, and it has said it will not form an alliance with Euskal Herritarrok unless the latter renounces violence.